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Update directives doc page (#1660)
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* Update directives doc page

* Add back one beloved piece of jargon

Co-authored-by: Steve Coffman <[email protected]>
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johnmaguire and StevenACoffman authored Oct 15, 2021
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46 changes: 24 additions & 22 deletions docs/content/reference/directives.md
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Expand Up @@ -5,13 +5,22 @@ linkTitle: Schema Directives
menu: { main: { parent: 'reference', weight: 10 } }
---

Directives are a bit like annotations in any other language. They give you a way to specify some behaviour without directly binding to the implementation. This can be really useful for cross cutting concerns like permission checks.
Directives act a bit like annotations, decorators, or HTTP middleware. They give you a way to specify some behaviour based on a field or argument in a generic and reusable way. This can be really useful for cross-cutting concerns like permission checks which can be applied broadly across your API.

**Note**: The current directives implementation is still fairly limited, and is designed to cover the most common "field middleware" case.

## Declare it in the schema
## Restricting access based on user role

Directives are declared in your schema, along with all your other types. Lets define a @hasRole directive:
For example, we might want to restrict which mutations or queries a client can make based on the authenticated user's role:
```graphql
type Mutation {
deleteUser(userID: ID!): Bool @hasRole(role: ADMIN)
}
```

### Declare it in the schema

Before we can use a directive we must declare it in the schema. Here's how we would define the `@hasRole` directive:

```graphql
directive @hasRole(role: Role!) on FIELD_DEFINITION
Expand All @@ -22,7 +31,7 @@ enum Role {
}
```

When we next run go generate, gqlgen will add this directive to the DirectiveRoot
Next, run `go generate` and gqlgen will add the directive to the DirectiveRoot:
```go
type DirectiveRoot struct {
HasRole func(ctx context.Context, obj interface{}, next graphql.Resolver, role Role) (res interface{}, err error)
Expand All @@ -31,31 +40,22 @@ type DirectiveRoot struct {

The arguments are:
- *ctx*: the parent context
- *obj*: the object containing the value this was applied to, eg:
- for field definition directives, the object/input object that contains the field
- for argument directives, a map containing all arguments
- *obj*: the object containing the value this was applied to, e.g.:
- for field definition directives (`FIELD_DEFINITION`), the object/input object that contains the field
- for argument directives (`ARGUMENT_DEFINITION`), a map containing all arguments
- *next*: the next directive in the directive chain, or the field resolver. This should be called to get the
value of the field/argument/whatever. You can block access to the field by not calling next for permission
checks etc.
- *...args*: Any args to the directive will be passed in too.

## Use it in the schema

We can call this on any field definition now:
```graphql
type Mutation {
deleteUser(userID: ID!): Bool @hasRole(role: ADMIN)
}
```
value of the field/argument/whatever. You can block access to the field by not calling `next(ctx)`
after checking whether a user has a required permission, for example.
- *...args*: finally, any args defined in the directive schema definition are passed in

## Implement the directive

Finally, we need to implement the directive, and pass it in when starting the server:
Now we must implement the directive. The directive function is assigned to the Config object before registering the GraphQL handler.
```go
package main

func main() {
c := Config{ Resolvers: &resolvers{} }
c := generated.Config{ Resolvers: &resolvers{} }
c.Directives.HasRole = func(ctx context.Context, obj interface{}, next graphql.Resolver, role Role) (interface{}, error) {
if !getCurrentUser(ctx).HasRole(role) {
// block calling the next resolver
Expand All @@ -66,7 +66,9 @@ func main() {
return next(ctx)
}

http.Handle("/query", handler.GraphQL(todo.NewExecutableSchema(c), ))
http.Handle("/query", handler.NewDefaultServer(generated.NewExecutableSchema(c), ))
log.Fatal(http.ListenAndServe(":8081", nil))
}
```

That's it! You can now apply the `@hasRole` directive to any mutation or query in your schema.

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